It’s so easy, Labour told us. And told us repeatedly. To end the strikes, all you need to do is to get round the table with the unions and thrash out a deal. And since the evil Tory government is too nasty and horrible to do that, you need to boot them out and elect lovely cuddly Labour instead. Simps.
Yet here we are just a year into this brave new Labour world and the doctors will shortly begin a five-day strike that will cause massive harm for thousands of patients, cause yet more chaos in our over-stretched hospitals and do nothing to help solve the waiting-list crisis. And this is despite the fact that just about the first thing Labour did when it got into power was to give these very same striking doctors a huge pay rise.
So, Labour, what happened to that simple solution? What happened to getting round the table with those militant doctors, who put their own pay packets before the needs of desperately vulnerable patients, and reaching a deal? It turns out that it’s not that simple after all. It turns out that Labour sold us a pup with all that garbage about how life will be so great if only we vote for “change” and kick out the evil Tories. It turns out that “Smash the gangs”, “create the fastest-growing economy in the G7” and “get round the table to cut a deal” were all a pack of lies.
I have a lot of time for Wes Streeting, who it seems to me is one of the few Labour ministers who understands reality. But I also have to say that if he thought he’d found a solution by giving the strikers a big above-inflation pay rise last year, then he was sorely mistaken. Giving into strikers means they’ll just come back for more. Then even more. The old adage about “feeding a hungry crocodile” is entirely apt. The crocodile is never sated.
And the attitude of these striking medics is all too typical of this country’s insane determination to breed victims obsessed with their own “rights” while paying no heed to collective responsibility. You can see how this plays out in the union mindset: in 2008 we were paid more than we are now, in real terms; we have therefore been victimised; and it stands to reason that it is our RIGHT to get more cash, regardless of our responsibility to the patients we ostensibly are there to help. And the Hippocratic Oath? Forget it.
Yet, how much more can we achieve as a nation when we take personal responsibility. Last night I watched the Lionesses reach the final of the Euros precisely because, to the dying moments, they realised that they would only reach their goal if they took collective responsibility for their destiny, and chose not to be victims. Good on them. I’m full of admiration. And what a contrast to the strikers. We need more like the Lionesses. We need that spirit.
As for Labour, chickens are coming home to roost. Their false advertising before the last election was a disgrace. And the voters are now realising it.